Training Japanese Listening and Reading through NHK Web Easy

There are many ways to learn Japanese, some people buy textbooks, some take classes at language schools, and others watch a variety of YouTube videos.

I’ve done all of these myself.

For a Mandarin speaker like me, reading Japanese sentences isn’t too difficult, since it’s often possible to guess the general meaning from the kanji (漢字). So I hope to strengthen my listening, speaking, and writing skills especially, and won’t end up like when I was learning English, being good only at reading and writing but unable to use it in real situations.

To work on that, I found an online Japanese tutor “Kahn Sensei” who’s a native speaker. He speaks Japanese and English but not Mandarin, so our lessons are all in English. In class, we went over JLPT grammar, read news and articles, and had a lot of conversations.

One of the resources he uses for our lessons is NHK Web Easy.

NHK NEWS is a news website produced by Japan Broadcasting Corporation (日本放送協会, にっぽんほうそうきょうかい, Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai, NHK). It features a wide range of local and international news, including articles and videos. To promote Japanese language and culture, NHK created NHK Web Easy, which contains much simpler articles, making it ideal for beginners and non-native speakers.

Some articles have videos, but the videos are still too challenging for me right now.

There is a good function on the site that lets you turn off the furigana (振り仮名, ふりがな, the hiragana above the kanji), which helps train more advanced reading skills.

See! I’ve removed the furigana from the news headline!

You can even read the articles while listening to the audio, which helps improve your listening skills. You can also adjust the playback speed according to your preference. However, based on my personal experience, the audio sometimes differs slightly from the written text.

By the way, the articles sometimes include proper nouns, such as celebrity’s names, countries, cities, or companies. These are highlighted in different colors within the text to help readers distinguish them.

Overall, learning Japanese is a very long journey that requires frequent practice to become familiar with the language. In my view, NHK Web Easy is definitely a very beginner-friendly platform. Reading a little each day helps me maintain my language skills, and it also gives me a glimpse into what’s happening in Japan.

Besided, I do have a small wish: I hope that in the future, NHK Web Easy could include Mandarin or English translations for the articles, or provide explanations of vocabulary and grammar. XD